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Staples Selects Salesforce.com for 1,500 Subscribers

World's largest office products retailer turns to Salesforce.com to deliver scalability and performance for CRM success

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — November 17, 2004 — Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the technology and market leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM), today announced that Staples, Inc. [NASDAQ: SPLS], the world's largest office products retailer, has chosen salesforce.com's award-winning CRM as the standard for managing and sharing contract sales information on demand. Staples Contract Division migrated to Salesforce.com for its feature rich product and proven scalability, as well as salesforce.com's comprehensive global support services. The agreement, which covers 1,500 subscribers, was signed during salesforce.com's third fiscal quarter.

Staples is one of the 12,500 companies of all sizes that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of October 31, 2004. Salesforce.com has been selected for all six of the largest deployments of on-demand CRM announced to date, including multi-thousand user commitments at ADP (NYSE: ADP), SunGard and SunTrust Banks. A 2,000-subscriber commitment at pharmaceutical services leaders Quintiles Transnational Corp. was also announced today.

"We're much more comfortable with the on-demand model" said James Dorman, vice president, marketing and sales administration, Staples Contract Division. "We found Salesforce.com to be the most capable on-demand CRM in the marketplace for effectively supporting our 1,500 users nationwide. It offers a more feature rich product, proven scalability, and the professional service organization necessary to support our multi-thousand user, enterprise-wide deployment."

After initially implementing another Web-based sales force automation solution, Staples migrated to Salesforce.com for state-of-the-art on-demand CRM fully supported by a world-class service organization. Salesforce.com provides world-class functionality to manage and share customer data, as well as a customization toolkit and integration platform so that Staples can customize its implementation to meet its unique requirements and extend its CRM to manage additional business processes. Finally, Salesforce.com's enterprise VLO architecture ensures scalability and performance to keep pace with Staples Contract's industry-leading double-digit growth.

Salesforce.com also delivers the full range of implementation and support services that Staples needs to be successful with its large-scale CRM deployment. Dorman explains: "We were looking for a comprehensive support organization able to meet the demands of our nation-wide Contract sales organization. From the quality of our implementation team to ongoing access to salesforce.com experts for any user, salesforce.com is working closely with us for our CRM success."

Staples' salesforce.com implementation represents a multi-phased rollout, and revenue is recognized as the service is actually delivered.

About Staples

Staples, Inc. invented the office superstore concept in 1986 and today is the world's largest office products retailer. With 60,000 talented associates, the company is committed to making it easy to buy a wide range of office products, including supplies, technology, furniture, and business services. With 2003 sales of $13 billion, Staples serves consumers and businesses ranging from home-based businesses to Fortune 500 companies in 19 countries throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Headquartered outside of Boston, Staples operates approximately 1,600 office superstores and also serves its customers through mail order catalog, e-commerce and contract businesses. More information is available at www.staples.com.

About Staples

Staples, Inc. invented the office superstore concept in 1986 and today is the world's largest office products retailer. With 60,000 talented associates, the company is committed to making it easy to buy a wide range of office products, including supplies, technology, furniture, and business services. With 2003 sales of $13 billion, Staples serves consumers and businesses ranging from home-based businesses to Fortune 500 companies in 19 countries throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Headquartered outside of Boston, Staples operates approximately 1,600 office superstores and also serves its customers through mail order catalog, e-commerce and contract businesses. More information is available at www.staples.com.